Wherein The Author Attempts To Match Wits With The Cliche’

Well, dear readers, your humble scribe has come to a terrifying realization – this blog is suffering from a cliche infestation. And when faced with a catastrophe of this sort (or is it ilk?) there is only one thing to do – nip it in the bud!

I place (squarely place, actually) the blame on the editor. He is a pleasant enough fellow, but he doesn’t always have his head in the game. He protests that he has too many irons in the fire, and is distracted by his need to bring in the bacon. But I respond that if he cannot cut the mustard, he must either go the extra mile or go the way of the dodo. You can only burn the candle at both ends for so long before you fall by the wayside. Literally. Of course, for what the job pays, it is an uphill battle to find someone with the right stuff. He claims that most of these cliches have been used tongue in cheek. Even if this is true, it is time to turn the other cheek and give it a good, stiff tongue lashing.

So, for all intents and purposes, we at JP’s Blog must start with a clean slate. Because, at the end of the day, we must realize that if we do not mind the store, we will find that an infestation of cliches is only the tip of the iceberg. Cliches are bad habits, and bad habits breed like rabbits. Success will mean going the whole nine yards or else we will really be up a creek without a paddle. And I don’t mean for just a New York minute, but for a month of Sundays. Without a better mousetrap, cliches will be beating a path to our door.

What we need is some work on our paradigm. I have not decided whether we need a new one or merely a shift of the one we already have. But something must be done because now the cliches think they are in charge. It is as though the inmates are running the asylum. Are we losing the battle? Or has that ship sailed? It is time to take the plunge (or the bull by the horns, even) and go whole hog. In this day and age, opportunity doesn’t knock twice. Therefore, it is imperative that we get a move on and get the jump on things. Being careful, of course, not to jump from the frying pan and into the fire.

This new direction is a far cry from the way things have been run here in the past. This blog has been a labor of love, but we have become set in our ways. Things have alternated between free and easy and fun in the sun as we have whiled away the hours doing the same old same old. All fun and games is no way to earn your keep as a blogger because blogging is dog eat dog. I know, this insistence on a fresh look may be adding insult to injury, but I only do it out of love. Keeping your ear to the ground only gets you so far – people who do that are a dime a dozen. What we need here is some fresh blood. Or is it red meat? I suppose either would be better than a kettle of fish, no matter how fine it may be.

Fortunately, we have an ace in the hole. Or is it up my sleeve? I can never remember – which is why my attempts at card tricks never come up aces. It is at least possible that I have not been playing with a full deck. But hope springs eternal. And here I find myself digressing again. Keeping things on the rails is easier said than done. And if you don’t keep things on the right track you may awaken to discover that the well has run dry. As a bone.

Let us try again – because there is more than one way to skin a cat. Oops, that could probably be considered insensitive to our cat-loving readers. But we must prioritize, and today is all about the Cliche. Sensitivity will be next on the list, something to circle back to once we have checked off this first priority. We will try to do that while the cat’s away. Or else it might get my tongue, leaving me with no words. As for the sleeping dogs, I will just leave them lie. Like a rug.

There is no time like the present to put our editorial nose to the grindstone. Something that does not sound at all pleasant, but I can only respond by saying no pain, no gain. And putting your nose to a grindstone is nothing to sneeze at! Can something be as plain as the nose on your face if it has been through a session on the grindstone? Asking for a friend. Maybe this is why some people prefer putting their shoulder to the wheel. Otherwise, you are only spinning your wheels, which is no way to run a railroad in this day and age. There is no way around it, we simply have to re-invent that wheel! Or else we will be stuck beating a dead horse.

It is true that I am writing this at the eleventh hour, but better a stitch in time than two in the bush. Or maybe that isn’t how the old saying goes. Oh well, that saying is as old as Father Time (who is as slow as molasses) and the reasons to ignore it are too numerous to mention. What we cannot ignore is that the time has come to seize the day and shoot for the moon.

I know – some of you doubt that I have it in me to win this fight. Or that I am fighting the last battle by bringing a knife to a gunfight. Others may believe that the low-hanging fruit has already been picked and that this writer lacks the bandwidth to get to the root of the problem. My only reply is that you must have faith that I can step up to the plate and send those pesky cliches packing. I assure you that your editorial team is a force to be reckoned with. And if all else fails, we can call Arnold Schwarzenegger to deal with this infestation of cliches – because he is the ex-Terminator, of course. Sorry, but terrible puns are a feature hereabouts and not a bug.

Going forward, we here at JP’s Blog will get our ducks in a row and take things to the next level. And then level up once we have gotten things on an even keel. To be clear, failure is not an option. Or else, we may as well throw in the towel. Or get three sheets to the wind. Which would not only upset the apple cart, but would also be a cruel twist of fate. So it is with emphasis that I repeat: There will be no cliches here at JP’s Blog.

Starting . . . tomorrow?

51 thoughts on “Wherein The Author Attempts To Match Wits With The Cliche’”

  4. “Tomorrow” is a good day to start. Since today becomes today at midnight, tomorrow isn’t real; therefore, it’s when I do all the stuff I don’t want to do too.

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  7. Well, you can’t teach an old dog new tricks! Here you have given us the baker’s dozen, at least four times over. You have left it all out there, given your 110%. You took one for the team. Now you can rest on your laurels. Wait till next year. It was great while it lasted.

    Well done JP!

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    • It appears that you prematurely bumped the “reply” button. Or you have invited me to finish the comment? Or maybe this should be read in the style of Yoda, noting a widespread sense of satisfaction. 🙂

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      • That’s what happens when I try to do email on my phone… I said….

        Glad we’re all on the same page! Nothing like cutting to the chase! Let’s circle back and revisit this in the morning! Have you checked with corporate?

        As a retired typesetter/graphic designer I have wanted to made 3D models of type and pose the model out on the figurative expression literally. In other words… A model of the word “OUT” posed on a tree limb…

        >

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  12. Thanks for the laughs. I think I’ll run this up the flagpole and see if anyone salutes!

    BTW if you were serious about changinig directions or looking for new topics to discuss, I’d request an update on your truck driving experiences over the past year or two. I don’t remember reading about that for a while.

    Whatever you do, remember that its a dog eat dog world out there and sometimes we end up wearing milk bone underwear.

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  13. Weirdly, this made me think of a boss I had one time (a Vice President, no less), who always used to mangle his cliche’s, and not as a ‘joke’. We’d be in a meeting, and he’d say stuff like: “…best not to look a gift horse under the bridge…”, and similar. We thought it was a joke, and then realized, that, no, he didn’t know he was doing it! Recently, I saw a boss portrayed on a television show that was doing the same, and I thought: “…is this common with VP’s and above?”

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      • Not exactly, I thought it was a malapropism, but it wasn’t. A spoonerism is like: …saying “blushing crow” instead of “crushing blow”, or “runny babbit” instead of “bunny rabbit”. What my boss was doing was a “mash-up” of using part of one common cliche tacked on to the end of another common cliche. Like: “Don’t cry over a gift horses mouth” (mashing together “don’t cry over spilt milk”, and “never look a gift horse in the mouth.”) Hilarious, and no one had the heart to correct him on it! I don’t know if there is a name for it…I’ve been told someone called it a “malaphor”, but that’s unknown to me?

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  16. Now that was a ton of fun! I find myself using cliches or phrases that I grew up saying or knew through the years and occasionally I have to check the online “Urban Dictionary” to ensure my innocent phrase hasn’t morphed into an X-rated description so I’ll yank it from my post. P.S. – I worked with a woman years ago and you know how we overuse the words “tons of _____” as in “tons of stuff” etc., she used the word “oodles”. She used that word a lot. All. The. Time. Drove me bananas!

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  18. I wonder how many clichés/idiomatic expressions there are–hundreds? Somehow we all know them; it just comes naturally. There are so many stories about their origins. These sayings tell us a lot about the human experience–we’re not just robots; we’re colorful, imaginative beings.

    It must be very hard for people learning English as a second language to make sense of these, since if read literally, they sound like gibberish.

    Other languages have clichés/idiomatic expressions too, which would be difficult for an English speaker to understand when first hearing them. The Chinese say, 井底之蛙 (jǐng dǐ zhī wā): “Frog at the bottom of the well”, meaning someone who can’t see the big picture. You see, there was this frog who fell into a well, and when he looked up he could only see a small circle of the sky, not its entire vastness. Just like a person who has a very narrow perspective on life.

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    • These also come and go with the generations, even for natives of the language. I wonder how many young people have heard of someone described as being as old as Methuselah. Biblical idioms aren’t as common as they once were.

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      • As a kid, I saw in a Peanuts comic strip, “The patience of Job”. I didn’t know what that meant, and I didn’t know it was pronounced “Jobe”, LOL

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      • I heard a barista the other day, referring to where someone lived (way out of town), and she said: “…you know, way out there where Jesus lost his sandals…”, and I thought, boy, I haven’t heard that one in 40 years!

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